Soaring Home Prices Pushing Poor Out : Neighborhoods: The shift from cheap to upscale housing has been accompanied by wealthy Anglos replacing poorer blacks. Some worry that the area will lose its appealing diversity.
Census data confirms what everybody has been saying about parts of Venice. With real estate values increasing up to tenfold, upscale newcomers are gentrifying the last of the old slums by the sea.
The trend is most sharply visible in the Oakwood district, where run-down bungalows with broken-down armchairs on their porches face two-story homes built to the designs of expensive architects, complete with porthole windows.
Latinos have remained the largest population group in Oakwood’s Census Tract 2732, with nearly half the area’s 4,749 residents. The number of Anglos was 33% higher in 1990 than it was 10 years before, the census found, while blacks decreased by 22%.
That change in the population mix came at a time of a dramatic rise in real estate prices in a neighborhood that was once a bastion of cheap rents and sea breezes.
Many poorer black residents have either sold their homes and moved elsewhere or have been forced to move by higher rents, according to Nella Tuttle, executive vice president of the Venice-Marina del Rey Area Board of Realtors.
“More of the African-Americans are moving out and the white people are moving in. The new homes and houses are steadily getting built down here, and a lot of people in the community are starting to wonder if this is the next Marina del Rey,” said Eric Johnson, 25, a lifetime resident of San Juan Avenue.
One relative newcomer to San Juan Avenue is Morgan McBain, formerly of Santa Monica, who bought his first piece of property in Venice for $70,000, seven years ago.
Refinancing as property values increased, he now owns seven properties, all of them worth at least $300,000, and lives in a two-story house on a double lot protected by hedges and a high fence.
“The area was unique because you could rent your property out for higher than your mortgage payments,” he said. “That’s how I was able to buy seven properties. Now of course, people are not buying to rent any more; they’re buying to live.”
According to Tuttle, homes in Venice generally are going for $400,000 and up these days.
A 25-year resident of the Venice area, Tuttle remembers when people were asking $75,000 for beachfront shacks on lots that would sell for more than $1 million today.
Rents have increased too, from less than $100 in the 1960s to $1,000 or more today for two bedrooms and a bath.
Some longtime residents are concerned that higher prices will mean a homogenization of their ethnically diverse neighborhood.
“I think it’s really too bad that this is happening, because an integrated, diverse population makes for better relationships, and who knows what could happen?” Tuttle said.
“I don’t want it to be a lily-white place again like it was years and years ago. There are a lot of black people that have money that live here in high-rises and apartments, but the poor black people are being pushed out. It’s really obvious.”
Judy Wyluda, another 25-year resident, said that skyrocketing real estate and gentrification came later to Venice than it did to other areas of the Westside.
“Venice for many, many years was considered to be not a very attractive community because of the oil wells, and because of the poor housing conditions, and also city services have been very poor over the years,” she said.
Despite that, she, like many others, was lured by the low rents, clean air and low traffic congestion of those days.
“When I first moved here, there was a stop sign at the corner of Lincoln and Washington boulevards, which is now one of the busiest intersections in the city,” she said.
Wyluda, who serves as executive vice president of the Venice Action Committee, said city services have improved as residents have become more involved politically.
Higher real estate costs also translate into fewer children, according to the census figures. In Tract 2732, the poll-takers found 323 fewer children than they did in 1980, a 22% drop, while in Venice as a whole, the number of children dropped by 19%.
Replacement of single-family homes by apartments also showed in the federal figures, which indicated an 11% increase in housing units as the ratio of persons per unit dropped by 10%, to just under two people each.
“I think that would be a case where people with large families might be leaving because it’s too expensive to live here,” said Dell Chumley, who retired to Venice from Indianapolis six years ago and served two terms as president of the Venice Town Council.
But, she added, “it’s a mistake to think that gentrification is taking place for some diabolical reason.
“It’s taking place because people are acting in their own best interests.”
Still, she said, some sort of outside action may be needed to guarantee the diversity of Venice, home to writers, artists, body-builders and working people.
In Venice as a whole, the census found Anglos made up about 64% of the population in 1980 and 1990. Latinos showed a slight increase and blacks showed a slight decrease.
Debra L. Bowen, an attorney and Venice Town Council board member, said she favors nonprofit solutions such as the recent purchase of an apartment house on Navy Street by the Venice Community Housing Corp. to keep it from being torn down and replaced by more expensive units.
“A lot of people in Venice have a great commitment to having social and economic diversity, and having it be a melting pot and not a sterile environment,” Bowen said.
A Decade of Change in Venice
The population of Venice stayed about the same in the 1980s, according to Census data. But the racial make-up is changing. In one census tract in the Oakwood District, where the architecturally significant houses of prosperous newcomers stick out on narrow streets lined by small, wood-frame homes, Anglos increased by 33% and Latinos by 20%, while African-Americans showed a 22% decline.
% of change Area 1990 population from 1980 Venice 39,971 -1 Tract 2732 4,7597 7
Ethnic and Racial Distribution
Anglo %chg Latino %chg Black %chg Asian %chg Venice 25,746 0 9,543 4 3,141 -9 1,267 -1 Tract 2732 1,165 33 2,351 20 1,145 -22 64 18
Percentage of Populations
Anglo Latino Black Asian ’90 ’80 ’90 ’80 ’90 ’80 ’90 ’80 Venice 64.4 63.8 23.9 22.8 7.9 8.6 3.2 3.4 Tract 2732 24.5 19.8 49.4 44.3 24.1 33.3 1.3 1.4
